He said: “If we pay to a 19-year-old boy what we were being asked for, to sign Luke Shaw, we are dead.

“We would have killed our stability with financial fair play and killed the stability in our dressing room.

“Because when you pay that much to a 19-year-old kid – a good player, fantastic player – but when you pay that amount of money, the next day, we would have had players knocking on our door.

“They would have been saying, ‘How is it possible I play 200 games for this club, won this and that, yet a 19-year-old comes here and gets more money than I get?’

“It would’ve killed immediately our balance and we couldn’t allow that. I don’t criticise another club for paying it. They can pay what they want. I don’t have any comment about it. But for my club we can say it would be very negative for us, especially when we can say Felipe is much less expensive. Sometimes you have to make decisions.”

Filipe Luis comes in as a long-term replacement for Ashley Cole, who has joined Roma. Cesar Azpilicueta, who spent the second half of last season at left-back, is more comfortable on the right side.